A growing population of coyotes in the wooded area bordering the Institute for Advanced Study has motivated the Princeton Animal Control Advisory Committee to recommend that sharpshooters be hired to help handle the problem. “There is a big pack over at the Institute Woods,” officer Johnson said this week. “I’m having a lot of complaints that they follow people around.”‘

You Can’t Always Eat Who You Want

The “Mountain Lion”, is a relative of the Cheetah (erroneously put in the cat family, felis, until last year or so). It has 40 names, in English alone, and is found from the American Arctic to Patagonia, from the sea shore to the high mountains. The weight above is that of the female. Males are heavier (typically up to 100 kilograms). The heaviest puma shot in Arizona was 300 pounds (136 kilos).

The lion/cougar/puma is capable of jumping up twenty feet from a standstill (yes, 6 meters; horizontally, 14 meters). It is capable of killing a grizzly (pumas and ‘golden bears’ were famous for their naturally occurring furious fights to death in California). The feline’s crafty method consisted into jumping on top of the bear, and blinding him with furious pawing. Top speed: 50 mph, 80 km/h. (By the way, there used to be pure cheetahs in North America, recently exterminated by man. I propose to re-install the Asian cheetah in the USA, in a sort of cheetah diplomacy with Iran.)

The philosophical question here is: what is this world all about? Is it about living on our knees, or ruling among animals and wilderness?

Why would Princeton panic about small canids? Because they don’t obey the established order?

Coyotes are totally clever, and not at all dangerous (being so clever). They have very varied voices, when in packs. Going out and shooting them is really primitive, and misses the main point of having nature around. That is: to teach humility, and teach the richness of our planet, visit hearts with emotional diversity, and minds with complexity.

Bears and Mountain Lions are a completely different matter. They are both extremely clever too, but can be very dangerous.

Running and hiking in the Sierra, I got charged by scary bears several times. I view this danger as a plus, but it never leaves my mind. I got scared nearly out my wits more than once.

Once, in a National Park on the coast, I literally ran into two large lions in 30 minutes! Then I got charged by a very large elk before he realized I was not a lion. Another high note was finding a bear cub on the trail in a close-to-vertical mountain side, on the way down, as dusk was coming.

After negotiating out of that one, a few miles further. I had the interesting experience to meet a large bear by the trail. He was lying down, bear rug style, at 9pm. It was an apparent ruse to let his unsuspecting prey approach until he could jump, and serve himself dinner. Great was his surprise when he realized that I was not a deer. Naturally, that obviously infuriated him. He was torn between making the human into dinner, and the instinct that this would turn badly for him. He instigated a few charges, until rocks heading his way encouraged his honorable retreat.

In Alaska I was charged by a moose with her progeny… although I did not retreat as fast as a native mountain biker who happened to be there too, the anti-grizzly cannister in my hand emboldened me to succeed in a circuitous move through a thicket to proceed towards my distant destination. The calf panicked, crashed into some obstacle, and drew his mother’s concern, facilitating my escape.

I often do shuttle runs where I get dropped some point, and then have, absolutely to proceed to a distant pick-up point, sometimes 4 days of backpacking away. Mountain running requires to proceed, no matter the obstacles in the way, when one is too far to turn around.

Bears know rocks, they have been hurt by them, and so they fear airborn rocks.

Here is the method: throw the rock on something noisy, to impress; I had to hit, with a very large rock, a charging bear directly, once; it fled; it was killed by rangers, three weeks later, after he caused a flesh wound to a grandmother; some will find all this very violent; well, nature is violent, that’s part of the whole point.

Mountain Lions are better charged and/or, roared or barked at. All these ways are somewhat deranged, and that is exactly the idea: Mountain Lions fear insane behavior.

In general making lots of noise helps, with bears and lions. I don’t have clever tricks to suggest for bathing safely in the murky icy Pacific. Although I assume that the presence of sea lions bobbing on the surface placidly is indicative of the absence of an obvious white shark prowling… In any case the pacific is so cold, you will probably die of cardiac arrest before you are devoured.

In Africa, there are about 500,000 elephants. 25,000 to 30,000 are killed, a year, to send the ivory to east Asia (China, Vietnam). So African elephants may disappear. This is beyond tragic, it’s irreplaceable. Elephants understand people’s gestures, without any learning (they apparently learn to use trunk gestures among themselves). One is talking about extremely intelligent animals here. (In contrast, chimpanzees have great difficulties understanding human gestures.)

Intelligence and culture are dominant among apex mammals. That’s what makes them so superior. Washington State had the smart idea to shoot full grown adult male mountain lions. Thus mountain lion society and culture collapsed, uneducated teenagers took over, and incidents with humans exploded (something about the quiet macho society!).

A Japanese specialist of chimpanzee intelligence who happens to have a bear in his lab, found that the bear did not underperform chimpanzees on mental tasks (that’s actually a problem with bears; being so clever, they can be unpredictable, one can never know what they have up their sleeve, like the one who mimicked a bear rug, above, or one who drove a car in Tahoe). A number of social mentally advanced animals (sea mammals, parrots) use advanced languages.

So what are my recommendations? The Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies ought to realize that, if it wants to become really brainy, it ought to give our fellow species a chance. They are part of what make our minds, in full.

Elephants and rhinoceroses used to be all over Europe and North America. They ought to be re-introduced right away, using Indian and African species (rare camels too; later, thanks to genetic engineering, part of those could be replaced by re-engineered ancient species, such as the Mammoth). Lions and leopard like species ought to be reintroduced too.

It can work: in the San Francisco Bay Area, there is an impressive population of mountain lions. I had many close calls (in the most recent incident, a few weeks ago, a lion peed an enormous and dreadfully smelling amount on a trail I was making a loop on, obviously to show me he owned the territory, a total wilderness reserve a few miles from Silicon Valley… especially at dusk).

However, the lions are extremely good at avoiding people (although one got killed by police in downtown Berkeley in the wee hours of the morning). They will all be collared in the next ten years, to find out what is going on. With modern technology (collars!) and sophisticated human-animal culture, there is no reason why extremely dangerous, but clever species could not live in reasonable intelligence with humans.

So rewilding is possible. It’s also necessary. Why? So we humans can recover our hearts, and our minds.

Whether we like it or not, we are made for this wild planet. By forgetting how wild it is, by shooting it into submission, we lose track of the fact human life, and civilization itself, are much more fragile than they look.

And thus, by turning our back to the wilds, we lose track of what reality really is. Worse: we never discover all what our minds can be, and how thrilling the universe is. We are actually bad students who refuse to attend the most important school, that taught by reality itself.

Rewilding is necessary, not just to instill a mood conducive to saving the planet, but also to remake us in all we are supposed to be.

Expect Evil, And Don’t Submit.

These are the times when, once again, the plutocratic phenomenon is trying to take over. That’s when the few use the methods of Pluto to terrorize and subjugate the many (to constitute what is variously named an elite, oligarchy, or “nomenklatura“, or aristocracy, that is, a plutocracy).

And how is that possible? because the many have been made into a blind, stupid, meek herd (I refer to Nietzsche for the condemnation of the herd mentality).

How do we prevent that? Nietzsche advocated the mentality of the “blonde beast“. That meant the lion (and not what the Nazis claimed it was; few were as anti-Nazi as Nietzsche). Why lion? Because lions are domineering. I learned in Africa that one could go a long way with wild lions, as long as one gave them respect, and time to get out of the way. However, disrespecting a lion means death.

Lions don’t accept to live on their knees. When abominable forces from the giant Persian theocratic plutocracy put the tiny Athenian democracy in desperate military situations, Athenians fought like lions. And democracy won.

Yet, 150 years later, when fascist, plutocratic, but apparently not as abominable, Macedonian forces put Athens in a difficult situation, Athenians surrendered. They did not fight like lions. Democracy would not come back to Athens for 23 centuries (and only thanks to the European Union).

We will not defeat plutocracy if we do not rewild ourselves. First. Let there be lions.

39 Responses to “REWILDING US.”

Well it was guaranteed that I would love this essay, wasn’t it! Brilliant. That man is of nature and, therefore, behoven to the forces of nature is core. Yet a million times a day man behaves as if we are of different origins with the fortune to consume nature.

The truth is that nature offers us so many lessons. The power of food and water (and air) when left unadulterated by bad science. The strength of communities that are local. (The ancestors of the domesticated dog lived in groups of around 50 animals.) The incalculable benefits of integrity, of embracing life in the present, of being in harmony with your (natural) surroundings. And on and on.

We ignore those lessons at our peril. Indeed, nature is starting to demonstrate that species homo sapiens will be an endangered species in the lifetime of those born in the, say, last 20 years. That our greedy, overpopulated ways are unsustainable.

Dear Paul! You are more than welcome to republish this essay. Your appreciation is much appreciated, as usual.
This essay is hand in hand with the one on instinct (“instinct is fast learning”).

The serious scientific message is that it’s nature that brings us, literally, the instruction set. The lego set maybe genetics, proteomics, epigenetics but the crucial rest of the entire instruction set, nearly everything, is coming direct from nature.
PA

I still think that learned behavior is reflexive rather than instinctive, but the important issue is recognizing its existence – with several evolutionary steps: learning from the animal’s own experience, from the group’s experience, and being taught by its elders, as is the case with mountain lions and a lot of mammals, birds and reptiles (interfacing with humans being only one cursus). So I’ll drop the semantic issue.

Your essay brings to mind another issue. You seem to reflect the anthropomorphic characterization of animals – some being noble, and others being despicable. Lions and elephants are to be admired and emulated; cockroaches, hyenas and weasels spurned and better ignored. This is an ages-long bias, which has resulted in the intrusion of so-called “charismatic” species into conservation policies. Policymakers have learned to make use of them, but this is still a skewed vision, which the general public should be weaned from. When strolling, a slug or a spider are every bit as fascinating as a roaring feline! (well, not quite).

Dear Dominique: I saw your comment on my smart phone, and I had time to think of some answers.
Of course, true about Harvard.

Those Princeton clowns are even worse, they bark after the wrong creatures, because coyotes, as long as one views them as coyotes, are delightful animals. They make incredible sounds, including high pitch choruses (so do mountain lions, especially I suspect, when in heat for the later). The main problem with sleeping in the wilderness when coyotes are around are their concerts.

For learning. Maybe a definition of learning would help.

Answer: learning is any input from externalities modifying the geometry. By that token, an inheritable epigenetic change such as coming from folic acid deficiency is learned.

Learning does not require sentience. At least so I propose.
So I claim many, most, reflexes will turn out to be learned.

I had started an essay to answer this in more details. Using in particular mini-brains.

Hyenas; I respect hyenas, they are extremely clever.

I discriminate on the basis of intelligence. An orca and a shark are not equivalent. it’s like comparing universal health care and obamacrap, I mean, sorry about the typo, obamacare.

In Africa, I was in the water, centimeters from the giant teeth of wild dolphins, or having them zoom by at tremendous speed. I was not scared, because I knew they respect intelligence too. But a weekend ago, I was terrified bathing in the world’s greatest concentration of white sharks. I have been meters from a swimming giant white shark once, and, although you can see there is intelligence there, in that sharp eye, ain’t much.

Using star species to evaluate ecosystems is solidly grounded in science. There was a flurry of articles in the last few weeks about the collapse of ecosystems, just because they are too small.

In Hawai’i the sign of eco collapse in a peculiar area is the disappearance of star birds…
PA

Thanks Paul for the reference, and Alex for the post. Indeed, it fits very nicely. The badger cull in England is really shocking, and it’s weird that continental Europe does not have the same problem (TB), although it has plenty of badgers…
PA

Thanks Paul for the reference, and Alex for the post.
It goes without saying that the attitude in Britain relatively to badgers and owls is primitive, and an indication of a nature derangement syndrome.

In France, there are several species of eagles, and vultures one tries to reintroduce massively. Also wolves are hated by some sheperds. Yet, nobody is even noticing the numerous foxes and badgers…

Basically, my argument is that our neurologies have potentialities that can only come into existence by exposition to nature. So, indeed, those with no exposure to nature are affected with a neurological deficit disorder.
PA

Great post. The doyens of learning could learn about their natural neighbors so that they can co-exist rather than destroy them.

In Britain elephants and rhino roamed around Trafalgar Square in the Ice Ages, but that was when Britain was connected by a land bridge to Europe. I cannot see the present elephants living in a cold climate like Britain without the adaptions like their wooly ancestors.

(Somehow it’s frustrating and difficult to post on WordPress, I have been told, and observed! I was told, as I tried to comment on some wordpress sites that… I was not a “user”…That’s something I would like to remedy. If anybody has any idea?)

Elephants in Britain? Well mammoth-elephant hybrids ought to appear anytime… Mammoths survived on Wrangell island until 4,000 years ago, and that’s much less welcoming, and much smaller than Britain…

Also in North America, there were mammoths in the north, but plenty of mastodonts in the lower 48… African and asian elephants would thrive in much of the USA. Also cheetahs, as I said… (That’s why the pronghorn antelopes are so fast!)

Britain ought to work on reintroducing wolves, who existed until relatively recently.
PA

dear Alex: Wolves in Scotland is a must. Be it only because it would symbolize the acceptance of a new mentality.

An idea that is progressing in scientific ecology is to reintroduce, or let be, similar species. This is a brand new idea, and makes some invasive species… welcome.

Elephant-mammoth hybrids would feel in an ecological role left empty. That sort of genetic engineering is OK, as it is completely different from GMO with genes coming from completely different organisms (say putting some fungal resistance in a plant).

I tried to post on some WP sites and was denied by the system outright, as it weirdly claimed it did not recognize my WP name. That happened even on your site! Anyway computer glitches is what we have to live with. my efforts will endure.

By killing the biosphere, we are killing our minds. Not just our water and oxygen supplies. We learn from that immense world, a mind of its own. We don’t learn just from a few genes… Genes themselves have to learn from the world; that’s called “epigenetics” (“epi-genetic: what’s above the genes”). It used to be called Lamarckism, and was made fun of ny the theists. And a few naive scientists (but not Darwin!).

But no more. Biology itself now has made it official that, even at the genetic level, we are learning machines.
PA

Patrice, thank you so much. Sometimes, I just get over-whelmed by the scale of the insanity around us. As I intimated in my reply to Alex, maybe, just maybe, there will be change before it is too late. Reminds me of the saying that goes something along the lines of, “Never underestimate the power of unintended consequences!”

And talking of bestowing honour, you would do Jean and me the very greatest honour in spending some time with us if your travels ever bring you in the Oregon direction! Same goes for you, Alex!

Thank you so much for this post… You have introduced me to a line of research and enquiry that excites me in a way that little has excited me for years. And yet I feel despairing, because so much of nature has been ruined by humans already, and I long for an innocence that no longer exists, except perhaps in our hearts.

Lorna: Much nature has been ruined, true, but it can all be reconstituted (the technologies, such as genetic reconstitution, exist). The real worry is the CO2 rampage. There is no existing tech to reverse that.
PA

Bear Attack Russia11/01/13 Elderly Man Survives Being Thrown Off a Cliff by the Bear He Headbutted

If someone tried to stab me then headbutted me, I’d be tempted to throw him off a cliff, too. In this case, I’m on Team Bear.

An aging shepherd who was confronted by a bear while walking through a raspberry field near his home lived to tell his tale despite being thrown off a cliff by the animal after the two came to blows.
Octogenarian Yusuf Alchagirov of the tiny Russian republic of Kabardino-Balkaria initially attempted to stab the bear with his knife, but the beast swatted it away with ease.

The 80-year-old then proceeded to Plan B: Headbutting and kicking the bear.

This time, the animal swatted Alchagirov away, hurling him off a nearby cliff.

Amazingly, the senior citizen survived the fall with only a few bruises and bite wounds, and four broken ribs.

“I got off easy. It would have killed me if I’d chickened out,” Alchagirov told a local TV station.

RIA Novosti reports that Alchagirov’s family “baked him three traditional pies to celebrate his survival.”

Indeed, indeed… A problem is that there are parts with no stones nor branches… But the gentleman kept on fighting, and that’s why he survived. Such is the spirit of the method. Against the predator, bear, lion or plutocrat, fighting is of the essence.
Thanks for the story… It’s very encouraging…
PA

Thanks for republishing this essay, Paul on Learning From Dogs. I was impressed by the Monbiot talk. Really good. I have to listen to TED more!

Something low key that he did not point out is that some of the rewilding, with similar species, would be painless. For example reintroducing cheetahs in the American West would have no negative consequences (the species is very easy to manage, being naturally half tame to humans). Same for reintroduction of vultures everywhere.
PA

It’s hard to live with elephants, especially in poor, crowded conditions. I remember bathing in Africa as a child with a bull elephant 200 meters away, on the other side of a stream, and being extremely worried, with all in attendance.

Europe used to have elephants, and North America, two species. Time to reintroduce them, and live according to our discourse.

Rewilding Euramerica can be done, and should be done, for the deepest philosophical and emotional reasons, and will create new, very productive jobs.
PA

Chris Snuggs emailed me an item that was in the UK’s Guardian newspaper some 12 years ago. Here is a little of that article:

Western conservation organisations are employing experienced gunmen to hunt down elephant poachers, amid fears of a massive resurgence in ivory poaching across east and central Africa.
An anti-poaching unit led by a former South African army officer and funded by two foreign conservation groups recently attacked two gangs of poachers in the Central African Republic (CAR), killing one man.

The initiative seeks to replicate the successful shoot-to-kill policies ordered by Richard Leakey, then head of Kenya’s wildlife agency, during the poaching epidemic of the 80s; but marks a violent departure for wildlife charities.

“For me it’s been a moral struggle, but sometimes you have to use force to change people’s minds,” said Eric Lindquist of the African Rainforest and Rivers Conservation Organisation (Arrco), the American charity which has set up the anti-poaching unit in cooperation with the CAR government.

The unit, which is part-funded by a Dutch wildlife trust, the Hans Wasmoeth Wildlife Foundation, consists of three CAR presidential guards, commanded by “David Byrant”, an alias used by a 50-year-old former officer of the South African and Rhodesian armies.

Last week, Mr Byrant launched a mission to arrest Congolese poachers in the southern CAR, having previously attacked a Sudanese gang, killing one and arresting three.

According to Karl Amman, an independent conservationist who coordinated the recent operation, in five years the Congolese gang of former soldiers had killed up to 400 elephants along the CAR’s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. There are now virtually no elephants within a 100-mile swath of the rainforest there, he said.
Paul Handover

Paul: Say hi to Chris and tell him I miss him, and his sharp political analyses. But I’m happy that he is not completely incommunicado.
Violence, of course is the only thing that stops violence, when the latter is violent enough. By forgetting this, too long, the holocausts of WWII were made possible.

Rewilding, fortunately is the opposite approach, soft and cuddly. It actually asks to stop wasting the Earth with fertilizers and forced irrigation, as such places where those methods are necessary would be the first to be rewilded.
Patrice Ayme

Hello Patrice! What a pleasant piece of positive feedback, and a Happy New Year to you …… I am flattered by your “sharp political analysis” compliment, but you are probably still bathing in the warm glow of Christmas goodwill!

I do try to spot lunacy and lies, and there are a lot of both stalking the planet, not least in Europe, where the VP of the EU has just demanded that the coming elections for the European Parliament should in effect be a de facto referendum on setting up a European superstate. This one will run and run!!

As for the elephants, Paul always tries to be positive, which is a nice antidote to my pessimism, but I was thinking about what can be done and came up with a list:

– donate some dosh of course, but there are so many good causes and we are not all Bill Gates
– spread the word among all one’s friends, trying not to be too much of a pain
– write to your MP
– write to the Chinese and other ambassadors
– publicize the disaster on Facebook
– buy a rifle and go and shoot some poachers

I am trying all the first lot but haven’t yet found a supplier for the rifle ……
Chris Snuggs

Thanks Chris, and happy new year to you too! A problem we have with superstates, is that we have a few around already: China, Russia, USA, and more… By not having our own, we make those ever worse. In Europe, we tend to have substates… Yet, without substance… Once Marine Le Pen and her British equivalent will have declared independence from each other, then what? Can they go into an area and fight each other with bare hands?

It will be funny to see all the anti-unionist parties unite in the European Parliament, should they win…

For elephants, as I said, rewilding ought to be our main line of defense. Wolves ought to be reintroduced in Scotland, and certainly megafauna in, say, France, could be done (and is already done on a small scale).
PA

The strange thing is that people are migrating to cities. Moreover, for a number of reasons, including cost, marginal agricultural land is been given up. These are perfect conditions for rewilding. Introduce the Amur leopard and the Siberian tiger to the Yukon (under very close watch), etc.

Animals such as Aurochs and Wooly Rhinoceroses, if they could be back engineered (Auroch is half way there) would not be difficult to manage. Local prehistoric horses are being reintroduced at the Spain-Portugal border

On Monday and Tuesday of the week I posted Legitimate Anger and Legitimate Hope. (And please see the footnote to today’s post)

Patrice Ayme left the following comment to the Legitimate Hope post:

It’s hard to live with elephants, especially in poor, crowded conditions. I remember bathing in Africa as a child with a bull elephant 200 meters away, on the other side of a stream, and being extremely worried, with all in attendance.

Europe used to have elephants, and North America, two species. Time to reintroduce them, and live according to our discourse.

Rewilding Euramerica can be done, and should be done, for the deepest philosophical and emotional reasons, and will create new, very productive jobs.